As might be expected, the Oswald Mosley governments which dominate Britain's late 20th century are stringently disciplined outfits. Their policies, substantially concerned with the hanging, flogging and sending back of assorted dusky marauders, are pursued with exemplary focus and absence of salacious fuss. The persecutions and deportations of pretty much everybody who does not own a bowler hat please the editors of Britain's tawdry but influential popular press. The absence of political scandal does not.

When, to the horror of Mosley, and the whooping delight of Fleet Street, one of his cabinet does eventually wander off the reservation, the identity of the errant minister surprises everyone nearly as much as the nature of his indiscretion. Enoch Powell, the excitable Secretary of State for Death, is discovered to have been moonlighting as a baritone in a traveling minstrel show, dressing up as precisely one of the people his party have pledged to banish.

Alternative employment must be found for Powell, and after the initial bother has abated, he is shunted into the position of poet laureate, recently vacated by Mike Read. This, however, makes matters worse. Powell's interest in vaudeville and researches into contemporary English verse lead him into the orbit, and onto the commune, of guitarist and doomsday prophet Steve Hillage, who presides over a small population of acolytes who dine upon mushrooms and worship a teapot. Powell goes enthusiastically native, and within weeks, has signed on as a permanent member of Gong, accompanying Hillage's often days-long fretful rambles with tambourine and interpretive dance. The newspapers have not been so happy since that business with Noel Edmonds and the badgers.

Powell smiles serenely, benignly, as the custard pies fly around him. He is no longer troubled by the petty squabbles of this [???]. He has seen a world bigger than the little England he once inhabited, and a universe bigger still.